JUST HOW MUCH PLASTIC WASTE DOES COSTCO GENERATE FROM THE FREE SAMPLES? AND WHY ARE WE THE LOCUSTS OF THE WORLD?

There is no recession experience quite like going to COSTCO with the kiddies and enjoying the fine samplings of items available. I often equate it with the old happy hour back in the eighties when bars would serve finger foods to keep you drinking. At Costco you can have a complete meal. There are drink samples, from coffee to juice to soda. Appetizers include chips and dip, crackers, cheese and fruits. You can enjoy a sandwich, hot pockets, potstickers, noodles and have a pasta salad or coleslaw as well. There is ice cream and pastry for dessert, nuts, dried mango, and candy. What more could you want? The kids are happy, my wife is happy and I am happy. What made me look twice was the huge amount of trash generated from the plastic forks that are given out with the samples; it seems like an unnecessary item when a toothpick would work just as well. The turn around time for a plastic fork is under a minute; once the sample is eaten, the Dixie cup and napkin and fork are dumped in one of the large red trash receptacles placed throughout the store. And it is a short time before the employee who has to haul the trash away, is seen with the large gray cart filled with trash bags containing the disposed of snack utensils. I like Costco, and the I think the samples are excellent marketing. I just wish that there was less waste generated. I know that Costco recycles a huge amount and has many green programs in place. I would like to suggest some 'green' forks, such as the ones shown below made from starch and vegetable fibers that would decay naturally       From their Web site, Vegware is a global leader in the development, manufacture and distribution of eco friendly food packaging and catering disposables. We currently operate in Europe and North America. All of our eco packaging products are made from annually-renewable or recycled materials, and all are biodegradable or compostable.  An email to Costc's sales and marketing division on this topic from me went unanswered. Pay attention Costco! In fairness, it is not just Costco - we are the ones doing the consuming. Like locusts we certainly abuse the resources available to us. Here are some statistics from a Mother Jones article which you can read HERE: "Chris Jordan is the photographer laureate of waste—his most recent project, "Running the Numbers," uses exquisite images to show the 106,000 aluminum cans Americans toss every 30 seconds, or the 1 million plastic cups distributed on US airline flights every 6 hours, or the 2 million plastic beverage bottles we run through every 5 minutes, or the 426,000 cell phones we discard every day, or the 1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags we use each hour, or the 60,000 plastic bags we use every 5 seconds, or the 15 million sheets of office paper we use every 5 minutes, or the 170,000 Energizer batteries produced every 15 minutes... Americans discard enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet every three months—and aluminum represents less than 1 percent of our solid waste stream. We toss 14 percent of the food we buy at the store. More than 46,000 pieces of plastic debris float on each square mile of ocean." In a society that runs on supply and demand, we are certainly demanding. At Costco I watch severely overweight people wrestling to get their samples. I watch people of every nationality displaying rudeness as they vie for the coveted sample in front of them, as though the store might run out, or this was the last scrap of food humanity would have available. When I walk along the street, no matter how nice the neighborhood, there is no shortage of trash left behind. And when I walk through the high schools I see students who do not think twice about dropping their refuse for someone else to clean up.